Prisons Begin Focusing More On Rehabilitation

March 28, 2005|By Los Angeles Times

SACRAMENTO, CALIF. — There is broad agreement that locking up and ignoring offenders has been far from a cure-all.

By insisting that California make rehabilitation a focus of prison life, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is joining a national movement of political leaders who believe it is time for a new approach to incarceration.

For almost three decades, politicians have belittled efforts to rehabilitate inmates as ineffective mollycoddling. Led by California, the nation undertook a prison-building binge and adopted tough crime laws that pushed the population behind bars past 2 million.

Now, with states under persistent economic stress and evidence showing that most inmates are re-arrested within three years of release, lawmakers across the country are acknowledging the need for change. There is now broad agreement that locking up and mostly ignoring offenders has been far from a cure-all for crime.

With bipartisan support, states small and large are shortening criminal sentences, restoring early release for good behavior, diverting drug offenders to treatment and beefing up efforts to help parolees rejoin society.

And in Congress, a Republican senator from Kansas soon will introduce the Second Chance Act, which would dedicate millions of federal dollars to helping ex-convicts find jobs, housing and treatment for mental illness and addiction.

"Even in stark economic terms, it's become very difficult to argue that our investment in prisons is delivering a great result," said Michael Jacobson, who ran New York City's jails and probation system in the 1990s and wrote a just-released book on incarceration. "So I think we're at a historic moment when ... conditions are ripe for dramatic reform."

Many states already are well on their way, pursuing new approaches that, while unproven by hard data, are showing promise and thinning out prison populations after decades of steady growth. The changes generating the most excitement come under a new label -- re-entry.

Unlike rehabilitation, re-entry reflects a reality about corrections that often escapes public notice: About 95 percent of all offenders -- about 600,000 people a year nationwide -- will be going home.

Reginald Wilkinson, chief of Ohio's prison system, said helping felons move from the cell to the neighborhood is simply good public safety: "I often ask the question, 'Who would you rather sit next to on a bus? A person who is very, very angry about their prison experience and untrained and uneducated? Or a person who obtained a GED and vocational training in prison and is on his or her way to work?' "

In embracing new strategies, California -- once seen as a trendsetter in correctional standards and practices -- lags far behind the pack.

The state's prisons are bulging with thousands more bodies than they were built to hold, a population that soared by more than 500 percent from 1980 to 2000. And its recidivism rate -- 60 percent, according to corrections officials -- is the highest in the nation.

That said, experts believe that whatever path California chooses, its sheer size as the largest state prison system -- with 163,000 inmates, 32 penitentiaries and 50,000 employees -- means it will have a hefty impact on national trends.

Until recently, legislators and governors showed little interest in charting a new course for the Golden State. The costs of that choice -- in dollars and in the churning of Californians in and out of prison each year -- are demanding attention now. With other public programs starved for scarce state money, the $6.5 billion correctional system is the object of intense scrutiny.

Schwarzenegger, unafraid of being dubbed soft on crime, has made his desires clear. Declaring the state's penal system a shameful mess, he has vowed that on his watch, prisons will do more than temporarily isolate felons from the rest of the population.

The Republican governor has put new people in charge and directed them to scour the land for successful rehabilitation programs that could work in California. He also has asked the Legislature to approve a top-to-bottom reorganization of the correctional system that lifts rehabilitation to equal standing with the nuts and bolts of running prisons -- a major departure from the recent past.

Details are sketchy, and funds are even scarcer. Moreover, one of the few initiatives Schwarzenegger already has launched -- the diversion of nonviolent parole violators into community-based programs instead of prison -- has faltered.

The revival of rehabilitation nationally -- and its bipartisan support -- is remarkable considering the drubbing the concept took for so many years. That began in the 1960s and '70s, when the public's long-held belief that criminals were sick and could be healed behind bars gave way to new thinking.